Prairie Fire (16 page)

“
Lavinia
. Oh, that name’s never going to work.” Rosie pursed her lips for a moment. “Why don’t we throw a welcoming party for the Cornwalls? It could be a spring festival with fresh flowers and punch. We could hang a big banner over the mercantile’s door: To the Cornwall Family—Welcome to Hope.”

Caitrin smiled. “It’s a lovely idea, but—”

Before she could finish, the soddy door swung open and Seth Hunter strolled in. “We made a decision,” he began, stopping when he saw the women’s surprised faces. “Uh, ’scuse me, Miss Murphy. I forgot I don’t live here anymore.”

“No, please. You’re welcome any time.” Caitrin stood as Jimmy O’Toole and Rolf Rustemeyer followed Seth into the small room. “Shall I put on a pot of tea?”

“Ja,”
Rolf said, grinning broadly. “Fery goot maken tea. I like.”

“It’s late, Rustemeyer.” Seth clamped a hand on the big German farmer’s shoulder. “We’d better leave Miss Murphy in peace tonight. We just wanted you ladies to know we’ve decided to let the Cornwalls stay in Hope—for one month.”

“One month?” Caitrin cried. “But Mr. Cornwall will hardly have time to build his smithy. And you know the bridge travel won’t get busy until late spring.”

“A month’s grace,” Jimmy explained, “to see how they get along here. Round St. Patrick’s Day, we three men will have another meetin’ and judge if we’ll allow the family to stay on. If Jack Cornwall causes one stime of trouble, he’ll be out on his ear. His mother’s to keep her Cornish gob shut tight, especially where my Sheena is concerned. They’re to stay to themselves. And if we see the mad girl anywhere about, the whole family will be asked to leave.”

“So you’ll permit the Cornwalls to stay in Hope,” Caitrin said, “as long as they keep themselves hidden, say nothing, do nothing, and contribute in no way except to bring business to the community. The rest of us, meanwhile, are to keep a sharp lookout so as to catch their slightest misstep. We’re to turn our heads the other way when they walk past, and we’re to pretend they’re invisible at all times. Yet we’ll be nosing about their business to find any flaws. Sure, in a month, we’ll have caught them at
something
, so we will, gentlemen. Then we can be rid of them like so much dust shaken from our boots.”

Caitrin crossed her arms and leveled a stare at the three men. Never had she witnessed a more prideful act or heard a more unchristian decision than this one. Seth gave his wife an uncomfortable glance. Rolf rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the floor. Jimmy stuck his thumbs under his suspenders and regarded his sister-in-law.

“Shall we hold everyone in Hope to such exacting standards then?” Caitrin asked the men. “If so, we must run Rolf away immediately for his unforgivable misuse of the English language. And Seth, I’m afraid you’ll have to go as well. Only yesterday you were helping Rolf frame up the church, and you must have hit your thumb with a hammer, for I heard a most unholy word escape your lips.”

“Seth!” Rosie gasped.

“Well …” Seth shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well, it hurt. I’m sorry, Miss Murphy. It won’t happen again.”

“Too late for that, I’m afraid. Under the rules you gentlemen have laid out, one infraction is cause enough to be run out of town. We may be known as the town of Hope, but we certainly offer not a measure of grace. Jimmy will have to go as well, I’m sorry to say. Sure, he’s been known to walk outside of an early morning and put on a most unacceptable display of stretching, hawking, spitting, blowing his nose, scratching his—”

“That’ll be quite enough from you, Caitrin Murphy!” Jimmy said. “You’ll not be makin’ light of our decision, young lady. Your own behavior toward Jack Cornwall has not gone unnoticed. Sheena told me you harbored that
sherral
in
my
barn last winter, so you did. You kept his presence a secret, fed him our grub, hid our own enemy from us. If you were not my wife’s sister, I’d put you out on your grug for such wickedness. Sheena tells me she saw Cornwall throwin’ sheep’s eyes at you today, and you back at him. She said she left the two of you in the mercantile havin’ a great cuggermugger, all cozy and sweetlike. What have you to say for yourself, lass?”

“I’ve nothing to say for myself. I’m not the person on trial here. It seems that Mr. Jack Cornwall has already been sentenced to a stoning by the likes of you Pharisees, so I’ll speak for him—”

“You’ve spoken for that devil enough already,” Jimmy snapped. “I never thought I’d see the day when one of my own family would turn against me. I gave you a home, food, and my good care, Caitrin. Is this the thanks I get? That you keep deadly secrets from us, that you speak out in defense of our enemy, that you accuse
us
of injustice?”

His green eyes were sharp as they stared into Caitrin’s face. She felt her cheeks flush with heat. Half of her wanted to scream at the three pious men. But she couldn’t deny that Jimmy had been correct in his accusations.

“I apologize to you,” she told her brother-in-law. “I had no right to hide Mr. Cornwall from you last autumn. I put a stranger’s well-being above loyalty to my own family.”

“Aye, you did. I thank you for your repentance, and I’ll welcome a change in your behavior. Never forget that you’re Irish, lass. You’re a Murphy from County Cork. Don’t be swept away by that wicked stranger when you’ve better men here at home. And don’t trade your allegiance to your Irish heritage for a few sweet words from a proven liar, a fighter, and a thief. Stay close to your own kind, Caitie. We love you, so we do. We’ll see you’re looked after.”

“Thank you, Jimmy.” Caitrin swallowed at the gritty lump in her throat.

“I am goot man here at home,” Rolf said, thumping his massive chest. “Maybe you marry vit me,
ja?
Haf many childrens.”

“Oh, dear Rolf,” Rosie cut in, laying her hand on the German’s brawny arm. “I think it’s time for us to move past basic English and into learning good manners.”

“Goot manners?” He grinned and shot a victory glance to the other men. “
Ja
, we are all goot manners, Seth, Jimmy,
und
me. I am goot man. Fery goot man. Tank you,
Frau
Hunter, for saying.”

Rosie laughed. “You
are
a good man, and you will learn good manners in time. Maybe you can start by escorting Miss Murphy to the welcoming party for the Cornwalls.”

“What?” Jimmy cried.

“We have to give the family a party, of course. Oh, don’t worry yourselves, Welcoming Committee. Caitie and I will plan everything.” Rosie gave Chipper a playful pat on the back. “Come on, sweetie. Grab that big ol’ dog of yours, and let’s head for home. I’m so tired! It’s a good thing I’m having a baby, or I’d be sure this was another sign I was on the road to my own funeral.”

Waving a cheery good-bye, Rosie hurried her family out the door. Jimmy settled his hat on his head and followed. Rolf gave Caitrin an awkward bow.

“You come to velcomen party vit me,” he said. “I am fery goot manners.”

“And
you
are Irish, Caitrin Murphy!” Jimmy called over his shoulder. “Don’t forget it.”

As the door slammed shut behind the men, Caitrin let out a breath. “I may have been born in County Cork,” she said into the empty room. “But I live in Hope, Kansas. I’m not Irish; I’m American … and I won’t be bound by petty prejudice.”

All the same, she knew Jimmy had been within his rights to chas ten her. Her loyalty should lie with her sister and the O’Toole family. And no sweet words from a gray-eyed man could change that.

Jack set a block of sod on the slowly rising wall of his smithy, then stood back to survey his new domain. Though he had worked all day and his muscles ached, it would be another week before he could put a roof on the building. Cutting, hauling, and laying the heavy sod was tedious labor, but the natural material would keep his workplace cool in summer and warm in winter. More important, it wouldn’t burn as easily as would the dry timber of a frame building. He sure didn’t cotton to the idea of lighting his forge the first time and burning down the whole place.

Good thing Seth Hunter had allowed him to build near the mercantile, Jack thought as he trimmed the grass from another sod brick. Any wagon coming from east or west was bound to see the sign he would hang outside his door. In fact, he’d already had his first customers. Though he hadn’t even built his forge, he’d managed to shoe five horses and patch a hole in a passing farmer’s water bucket. The jingle of coins in his pocket sure felt good.

Whistling, Jack heaved the brick onto the wall and edged it into place. He’d seen Caitrin Murphy coming and going from the mercantile, but she had made herself scarce around his work site. He could hardly blame her.

After Jimmy O’Toole’s unpleasant visit to his camp the night of the Cornwalls’ arrival, Jack wasn’t exactly on speaking terms with the family. Like some kind of self-appointed policeman, O’Toole had marched over and laid out a bunch of rules and regulations the Cornwalls were to follow. Then he’d announced they would have one month to demonstrate their good behavior, or they’d be expelled from the town. Jack’s mother had responded with a flurry of loud verbal assaults about Irish slothfulness and stupidity … and that had ended the conversation.

“Hey, Uncle Jack,” Chipper said behind him.

Jack swung around. At the sight of the little boy, he felt like the sun had just risen. An unexpected truth filtered into his heart. In spite of losing the child to Seth last autumn, Jack had been granted Chipper’s presence—his snaggletoothed grin, his deep chuckle, his cheery conversation were a part of Jack’s daily life again. God had given him the boy after all.

“Hey, Chipper,” Jack greeted him, kneeling to give his nephew a hug. “I haven’t seen you all day. What have you been up to? Trouble, I reckon.”

“Naw!” Chipper giggled. “Me an’ Will O’Toole was fishin’ at the creek almost all day. Didn’t catch nothin’, though. I gotta go pick buffalo and cow chips for Mama now. But first, lookit what I brung you!”

He pulled half a cookie from the pocket of his overall bib. “Oops, I guess it busted when you gave me that squeeze. It’s a sugar cookie. Mama made it.”

Jack accepted the crumbly gift and took a bite. “Mm-mm. Now, that’s one good cookie. You tell your mama I appreciate her thinking of me.”

“Oh, Mama didn’t send it to you. She baked a big batch of cookies to sell in the mercantile. Caitrin Murphy gave this one to me when I was in there fetchin’ a coupla hooks for me an’ Will this mornin’. It was warm, an’ it smelled so good. I had all I could do not to eat it. But I saved it just for you!”

“Miss Murphy told you to give this to me?” Jack felt a ripple of satisfaction run up his spine. “What exactly did she say to you?”

“She said, ‘Give this cookie to your uncle Jack.’”

“And that’s all?”

“She said in her funny way of talkin’, ‘It takes time an’ hard work to build castles, so it does.’ An’ I reminded her that you was buildin’ a smithy, not a castle. Then she told me the smithy is your castle, an’ you’re gonna build all your dreams right inside it. Is that true, Uncle Jack?”

“I reckon it is.” Jack smiled and rumpled the boy’s dark hair.

“But I thought you was gonna build stuff outta iron inside your smithy. Like wagon wheels and plows.”

“I am. And with the money I earn, I’m planning to make my dreams come true.”

Chipper tilted his head to one side. “Know what, Uncle Jack? I think Jimmy O’Toole was dead wrong the other night at Miss Murphy’s house when he called you a liar an’ a fighter an’ a thief.”

Fighting the fury that rose inside him at the child’s repetition of O’Toole’s slanderous words, Jack studied Chipper’s bright eyes. “I have done some wrong things in my life, little fellow,” he said. “Same as everybody. But you know what Miss Murphy told me once? She said God thinks I’m precious. He loves me. This winter I did a lot of praying and reading in the Good Book, and I found out she was right. The God who made this very sod we’re standing on loved me enough to come down here and die for me. Now if he cares that much about an ol’ scalawag like me, I figure he can help me leave behind whatever wrong I did and walk along a new road. And if Will’s papa would look at who I am instead of who I was, maybe he could see that.”

Chipper pulled the other half of the cookie from his pocket and handed it to his uncle. “I bet you’re right, Uncle Jack. Well, I gotta go pick up cow chips for Mama. Guess what? We’re havin’ stew and corn bread tonight!”

“Yum! Come by and visit me tomorrow,” Jack called as Chipper ran off to do his mother’s bidding. “And tell Miss Murphy thanks for the cookie!”

The boy’s laughter was ringing in the air as the mercantile door opened and Caitrin Murphy herself stepped outside. Jack caught his breath at the sight of the woman. In the past few days, he had reminded himself a hundred times to stand back and give her room. If he inserted himself between her and her family again, it would only cause trouble.

Besides, she wasn’t all that special, he had told himself again and again. Just a red-haired gal, a little too skinny, and a lot too mouthy. Just a common working woman. A spinster at that. She was past the age when most women married—her midtwenties at least. And she had all those obnoxious relatives… .